Wednesday evening round-up (and Open Thread)

This has been a crazily chaotic day. I got thrown off my stride by my morning swim (phase 2 in physical therapy for my knee, now that I’m off the perpetual motion machine), and just couldn’t catch up anymore. Throw in a few unexpected demands on my time and — voila! — I’m doing my round-up early in the evening instead of first thing in the morning. Still, proving that there’s always room for a cliched phrase, better late than never. So, here goes:

Perhaps we’ve reached a stage where the best we can hope for is that Israel will have our back, rather than vice versa. At least today, Israel had its own back (can I say that and still make sense?), capturing a massive arms haul — Syrian missiles, shipped out from Iran, and headed to Gaza. Thank God the Israelis still have the sechel to watch out for their own interests.

***

And speaking of Israel’s interests, if the last twenty-two years have shown us anything, it’s that participating in peace talks isn’t working. The reason, of course, is that the peace talks are all directed at a “two-state solution,” but the Palestinians, as well as the surrounding Arab and Muslim states, have no interest in a two-state solution. Yoav Sorek says that it’s time to stop chasing this chimera and create a new paradigm: a one-state solution — Israel — that the Palestinians have to learn to live with.

***

If you’re girding your loins against the possibility of a Hillary victory in 2016, maybe it’s time to stop girding and start working incredibly hard for a good conservative candidate, instead of the usual lousy conservative candidates. I say this because Hillary is also a lousy candidate and the only way in which Republicans can lose if she’s the Democrat candidate is if they put up another McCain. (What do you bet that the Republicans put up another John McCain?)

***

Here’s a scary thought: I already suggested that Obama has gone round the bend. What if Putin has done the same? The world is scary enough with one madman in power. What’s it going to be like with the last two great powers of the 20th century both headed by malignant narcissists whose already tenuous grip on reality has been destroyed by the bubbles in which they surrounded themselves?

***

Maybe none of it matters anyway, at least when it comes to Russia. I’ve noted before that Russia is in serious decline and this article provides the facts behind my conclusions. Whether Putin’s move on the Crimea is crazed or calculated, it can only buy a small amount of time for a country that will be eaten by China in the next few decades. (And considering its population, China will have a credible “lebensraum” argument, won’t it?) Ultimately, Putin will have gained nothing for his own country, although he will have succeeded in providing more evidence that Obama is feckless and unreliable, and may have caused several thousand, or even several hundred thousand, deaths along the way. Given the two delusional men at the helm of two declining nations, the last thing we want is a fast-walk to military confrontation.

***

If Snowden had merely shown how the U.S. government routinely collects very scrap of data it can about American citizens, he would have deserved the “hero” title that the far Left and far Right placed on him. But considering that he mostly stole 1.7 million sensitive files touching upon national security, and then headed for the Chinese and, after that, the Russians, it’s clear that he’s the biggest traitor in American history. I’m putting more and more credence in the theory that he was a massive traitor all along, and that he stole the “spying on American” stuff only to provide himself with cover.

***

Walt Disney Co. is free to demand that everyone and everything with which it deals support gay marriage. And people who disagree with that position are free to stop dealing with the Walt Disney Co. I really like Disneyland and Disney World, but it won’t be the end of the world for me if I never go to either place again. I bet the same is true for a lot of Americans. I’m not suggesting a formal boycott. I am pointing out, however, that in this information-rich world, we no longer have to deal with companies that spend our money in ways we dislike.

***

Jonah Goldberg supports Obama’s initiative to help black youth, even if it’s manifestly discriminatory for the federal government to extend aid to one racial group while ignoring others (not that this has ever stopped the feds before). Jonah is right that America’s black youth are in desperate straits and need all the help they can get. My only concern is that it was the federal government that got America’s black youth in this situation in the first place, thanks to Leftists’ belief that blacks cannot manage without government support. It seems to me that the federal government is the last entity that should be trusted to get blacks out of this miserable cycle of violence, drugs, and poverty. Remember Frederick Douglass’s words (emphasis mine):

In regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us…. I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! … And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! … Your interference is doing him positive injury.

Did I say “banana republic stuff”? I did, and I meant it. Michael Ramirez has his own comment on what Barack Obama has managed to do in five short (although they seemed very long) years.

***

The NAACP says “stand your ground” laws are part of “institutional racism.” Think about that for a moment. The laws simply say that, if your choices when faced by an assailant are to cut and run or to stand and fight, you can stand and fight (especially when cutting and running carries risks). They are facially neutral laws that apply to anyone facing a threat, black or white. What the NAACP is implicitly conceding is that the only/primary threatening parties in America — the ones who will be on the wrong side of “stand your ground” — are black. Wow! Is that racist or what? It seems to me that the NAACP is guilty of a bit of institutional racism itself.

A decade long tradition will be missing from this year’s Boston Marathon. Due to the new, stricter security guidelines released by the Boston Athletic Association last Wednesday, ruck marchers will not be allowed to make the 26.2-mile trek from Hopkinton to Boylston because they are considered “unauthorized participants.”

Active members of the military have participated in ruck marches at the Boston Marathon for years. Donning full fatigues and carrying 40-pound rucksacks on their backs, ruckers march the length of the course in support of families of fallen soldiers.

Muslims don’t have to defeat America on the battlefield. If they scare us enough, we’ll unilaterally declare defeat and turn ourselves over to the enemy.

***

And finally, Danny Lemieux posted the following quotation on his real-me Facebook:

“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”

– Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
(publ. 1776-1789)

It’s funny how we spend our adolescent years desperately trying to shake off our parents’ care, which we feel comes with too many strings attached, and then spend the rest of our lives trying to get someone to care for us, strings or not.

Warm the ligaments and tendons with your hands, if movement itself doesn’t warm it up. That should remove some of the stiffness. The area that can be manipulated will be limited based upon just how extensive the surgical damage is though.

Wolf Howling

“One state solution” – That really is the only answer. And it needs to be coupled with a new paradigm not yet seen – holding the Muslims to the same standards of conduct as the Israelis.

shirleyelizabeth

Question: is there a way to subscribe to the comments on a post, like you can after commenting, without commenting on it? My blog schedule seems to put me at reading very soon after you post and therefore missing out on what everyone else has to say.

What shirleyelizabeth said!! Only my problem is when I comment and forget to check the box!! Do not mention my age, please.

BW wrote: “The NAACP says “stand your ground” laws are part of “institutional racism.”
The really disgusting thing about this is that careful studies of who uses “stand your ground” laws have shown that black folks – you remember, the ones the NAACP is supposed to be representing – claim the protection of these laws disproportionately! That is, if the NAACP is able to get rid of “stand your ground”, then even more black people are going to go to jail!

Of course, that will give the NAACP something ELSE to whine about, so I suppose it’s all good….to them, at least.

I remember reading Black leader’s comment that the REASON that blacks are set free by jury is because they killed another black man. Had they killed a white man OTHOH…Bah I hate this race crap. The small sample of the Tampa Bay Times article does not bear that out. I agree with Frederick Douglass the help that our government gives is giving a man a fish but the unintended consequence of ‘compassion’ is that it removes his motivation to work. So that adage plays out like this “Give a man a fish and he’ll come back tomorrow for another.” Perhaps the conservative view of that old adage ought to end like this: “But teach him to fish and he may create small jobs for his community.”

I would disagree that Russia will get “eaten” by China, though. Why? Russia holds a trump card – nukes! Other countries are taking note.
With Obama’s feckless, destructive foreign policy, I expect that nuclear non-proliferation will soon shift to massive proliferation with the inevitable outcome that we will see nukes used somewhere in the world in our lifetime.

SADIE

Israel capturing a massive arms haul ..
Since sanctions were lifted, Iran has an extra $20 billion to “invest” in havoc and the Europeans are tripping over one another to do business with Mullah, Inc. Thank goodness Israel understands what ‘stand your ground’ means.

The US has no idea what Snowden copied or took.
Most of what people know are like anything else from the Left, manufactured illusions based on no personal experience whatsoever. They consider this ‘knowledge’ and political wisdom.

I would advise the human race to never underestimate the power of evil nor underestimate the Power of the Left.

The Left is not what it seems. There is a hidden face to the coin. Evil isn’t what people think of it either. That makes sense if you realize that most people have never been part of the highest black ops on the Left (including so called defectors from the Left, excluding Soviet KGB agents) nor have they been welcomed into the arms of evil operations on Earth. So there’s no way they can know, unless they have a primary source, personal experience, or have derived the equations on their own.
When the Left prophesies or uses propaganda, the bottom tier cannonfodder in the Leftist hierarchy automatically responds. That’s why it is important to have informers on the Left, as Neo also pointed out the ability of the Left to react to their own propaganda faster than we can perceive that propaganda. When the Left said that Bush was fascist and creating a dictatorship in the US, the Left was talking about the kind of messiah they wanted and they wanted to deny our own messiah. That’s how religious death cults think. This is a propaganda hint. I took it to heart. The vast majority of people, calling themselves humans, didn’t connect the dots. The Left’s propaganda is a PRECURSOR to actual field operations.

Charles Martel

Danny, it’s interesting to speculate about the future course of relations between Russia and China. Yes, Russia has nukes, but so does China. I don’t either country would be keen on exchanging nukes since both understand the nation-killing consequences.

I think what will happen is that China will slowly absorb Siberia on a de facto basis. Many Chinese will emigrate (infiltrate) there illegally, creating an administrative mess for a thinly planted government operating 4,000 and 5,000 miles away from the control freaks in Moscow. Also, China has been buying up Canada, parts of Latin America, and African countries, establishing control over resources and finances, a control that works far better than outright military seizure. So I could see capital-rich China buying access to Russian minerals from the kleptomaniacs who run Russia. Factor in Russia’s prodigious rates of alcoholism, abortion, and sleaze, and China should someday be able to pick the carcass at will.

China would expand south, west, and east. Russia would expand west and south.
I don’t think they will come to a conflict any time soon.

Ron19

shirleyelizabeth says

Question: is there a way to subscribe to the comments on a post, like you can after commenting, without commenting on it? My blog schedule seems to put me at reading very soon after you post and therefore missing out on what everyone else has to say.

Several things to try, perhaps Bookworm or her web guy can give us instructions on these.

I work with Microsoft Windows 7 Internet explorer, and a little bit with Mozilla Firefox.

While you are on the web page that you want to see comments for, click on Add to Favorites Bar or Bookmark This Page or whatever your browser uses. You can also store web page URL’s in a word processor file for Word or Notepad.

is an RSS thing on my Favorites Bar that lists all articles up to the limit you set in properties for that; I store the maximum amount of entries. New posts that you haven’t gotten to from this are highlighted.

In the left hand column of the web page, under the heading of Meta, are Entries RSS and Comments RSS. I haven’t used these with the current web engine, after Bookworm had to change her website around some months ago.

shirleyelizabeth

Excellent, Ron, thank you. I added the comments feed to my Feeldy (my chosen reader) and it works great.

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